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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

"Karla Cabrera, a 29-year-old lawyer in Mexico City, was excited when she came across “Introduction to Mao Zedong
Thought,” an online course about the Chinese revolutionary leader. She
has a passion for Chinese history, and she hoped the class would shed
light on the brutal political battles that took place under Mao’s rule." according to Javier C. Hernandez of The New York Times.

Guards changing shifts beneath the portrait
of the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing
after a flag-raising ceremony this month. Photo: New York Times

Each
class opened with a patriotic video montage. Talk of Mao’s errors was
minimal, restricted to the Communist Party line. The professor, a
faculty member at Tsinghua, one of China’s
most prestigious universities, seemed eager to mimic Mao himself,
dressing in a tunic suit and referring to Maoism as a “magic bullet” for
the party.“It was like watching propaganda,” Ms. Cabrera said in a telephone interview. “They just told you what they wanted you to know.”

As China seeks to extend its global clout, it has gone to great lengths in recent years to promote its culture and values abroad, building vast media operations overseas and opening hundreds of language and cultural outposts.

Now it is turning to a new tool: online education, a rapidly growing industry that promises access to millions of students and the endorsement of some of the world’s most renowned institutions.

The
course is one of more than a hundred offered on edX and other top
education platforms by mainland Chinese universities. There are classes
on philosophy, architecture and computer science, but also a handful on
subjects deemed politically sensitive in China, such as international
relations or law, in which Chinese professors must adhere to the party’s
views.

Aiming
to expand their offerings and draw a global audience, Chinese
universities are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on sleek
videos and translations. They are advising instructors to abandon dull
lecturing styles. And they are coaching professors on how to deal with
foreign students, telling them to embrace open discussion and dissent.

But
the effort faces significant challenges, most notably convincing
overseas students that their courses are intellectually compelling and
rigorous, despite China’s strict limits on academic freedom. It also
puts online education providers in a difficult position, forcing them to
strike a balance between preserving academic freedom and maintaining
high standards for thousands of courses.Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought 毛泽东思想概论 | TsinghuaX on edX | Course About Video Video by edX

Yong Zhao,
an education professor at the University of Oregon, compared China’s
push in online education to its efforts to build an international
following for its flagship news network, CCTV, over the past decade.“China has been on the receiving end of education for a long time, and
now it has a big opportunity,” Professor Zhao said. “The question is,
can it really reach anybody? Does it have the same credentials, quality
and authenticity?”

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About Me

Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.